Vilnius tries to restore `Jerusalem of North'

Lithuanian capital sees tourist draw

January 22, 2003|By Alex Rodriguez, Tribune foreign correspondent.

VILNIUS, Lithuania — The sidewalks of Zydu Street, a winding cobblestone lane in the heart of Lithuania's capital, once bustled with the din of peddlers and cabarets, with streetside marionettes lampooning Neville Chamberlain and theaters performing Shakespeare in Yiddish.

Zydu Street anchored this 680-year-old city's Jewish Quarter, renowned in Europe as a citadel of Yiddish learning and Jewish culture. Europe's top Talmudic scholars studied there. So did musician Jascha Heifetz, who was 5 when he played violin at the quarter's Imperial School of Music.

The quarter flourished for more than three centuries. Then, in a span of three years, it vanished.

Nazi occupation of Vilnius lasted from 1941 to 1944. German soldiers cordoned off the quarter with barbed wire and systematically murdered virtually all of its 60,000 Jews. They razed the quarter's treasured landmarks, including the Great Synagogue on Zydu Street and the Strashum Library, once home to the world's largest collection of Yiddish-language books.

Today, nothing distinguishes Zydu Street and the rest of the Jewish Quarter from any other Vilnius street or neighborhood.

In a crusade deemed quixotic by some and vital by others, a former member of Lithuania's parliament is spearheading an effort to rebuild much of the quarter, brick by brick.

Emanuelis Zingeris' idea is not unprecedented. Prague and Krakow have worked to restore their Jewish quarters, taking sections with synagogues and other landmarks still standing and turning them into tourist attractions. But Vilnius is starting from scratch, envisioning the reconstruction of 30 buildings in vacant lots and parks at a cost of nearly $100 million.

The cornerstone of Zingeris' dream is the reconstruction of the Great Synagogue, a huge Renaissance-style structure that once towered over the neighborhood's two-story buildings. Zingeris estimates rebuilding it will cost $10 million and take years to complete.

Zingeris, 45, has pursued the project for four years. On New Year's Eve, he won an important victory when Lithuania's prime minister appointed a commission, led by Zingeris, to oversee the restoration effort.

He convinced federal and city government officials that his ambitious plans would pay off in practical terms. Vilnius, a tourism draw, would be even more attractive if the Jewish Quarter were revived, he said.

But if tourism is important, Zingeris says, reclaiming identity is doubly important. When he walks through Vilnius' Jewish Quarter, he sees the erasure of Jewish existence that the Nazis strove to achieve.

The Great Synagogue has been replaced by a Soviet-built, tan-bricked kindergarten building and a basketball court. All but one of the broad, basket-handle archways characteristic of the quarter's architecture are gone. On some walls, scrawls of graffiti have replaced the Yiddish script that advertised bakeries and butcher shops.

Tour groups from Western Europe and Japan who visit the quarter walk away surprised, asking whether they've been directed to the wrong place.

"We didn't just lose houses and buildings," said Zingeris, who is Jewish. "Vilnius lost a part of its identity. We used to be known as the `Jerusalem of the North,' and we lost that."

Zingeris still must find financial backing, which would come exclusively from the private sector. He says he doesn't have "a euro in my pocket yet," but plans to push for funds this year.

The project has its critics. Some point out that only a few thousand Jews still live in Vilnius and say the money would be better spent on aiding the thousands of Lithuanians who live below the poverty line. Several Jewish leaders in Vilnius say city resources instead should go toward educating people about the Jewish experience.

Zingeris and his backers say they see restoration as a kind of living museum, educational in its own right.

"This is very much educational," he said. "We are restoring the sights and sounds of prewar Jewish culture in Vilnius, a culture that was silenced through the war and through the Soviet regime."